


One Summer's End

by furius, motleystitches (furius)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotionally Repressed, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Muses, Old Friends, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-25
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furius/pseuds/furius, https://archiveofourown.org/users/furius/pseuds/motleystitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik Lehnsherr, successful businessman, has been the muse to the artist Charles Xavier for the last twenty years. They'll readily confess to loving each other through art, but at the last show Charles Xavier is holding in New York before he heads over to England, everyone else around them realises that it's not enough.</p><p>A tale of friends, lovers, and busybodies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to trobador who posted an inspiration photoset, to codenamecesare and icecreamwolf for hanging out xmentales chat reading my plottings.
> 
> Title courtesy of W.B. Yeat's poem, "Adam's Curse".

“Tell me the problem’s solved or you’ll regret it, Summers.”

Summers cringed. Erik was late, but incompetency reflected badly upon him and there was a deadline, Friday night or not. A Stark contract did not come easily. Potts worked on weekends. He looked at the window at the late afternoon sky, sighed, and texted his new ETA.

He arrived almost two hours later than they had planned. He didn’t make it before sunset which had the quality of light they wanted, but Charles took one look at him and asked, “Dinner first? Or later?”

“You’re going to feed me before I get my clothes off?” Erik took off his jacket. “I seem to remember you worrying about me gaining weight.”

“That was almost twenty years ago,” Charles muttered as he headed toward the sideboard instead. “Heroine chic was in.”

“Yes, how could I forget the drug references,” Erik said, stepping out of his shoes then started unknotting his tie. “I had a late lunch. I’m not going to faint on you.” He unbuttoned his shirt and then his trousers before hanging them up. His robe was on its usual hook, but the loft was up and it was warm tonight. In bare feet, he stepped carefully over the paint supplies. Charles’ living room was his studio. He had another apartment on Park Avenue where there were actual couches and a kitchen big enough for a team of caterers, but the loft was where he painted and lived most of the time and where Erik saw him most often.

“Will you fall asleep if I ask you to lie down?” Charles asked. He had poured two glasses of wine. He handed one to Erik than swept his eyes warmly down Erik’s nude body. And Erik couldn’t help it, he preened under the gaze, as he had when he first came to New York, one of the innumerable wide-eyed young graduates seeking their fortunes while crammed four to a tiny apartment when Charles, native New Yorker, though slightly younger, was already rich and well-connected, a promising artist facing his first major creative crisis.

Erik laid back against the strategically placed cushions on the rolling wooden platform with its moving blocks while Charles moved around him, adjusting the lamps. Erik turned his head and tugged a silky bit of fabric further down his thigh before Charles could suggest it. It might seem that the long partnership had engendered a sort of telepathy but in truth, Erik thought it must’ve always been there for them to work as well as they do.

He looked up at Charles biting his lip as he fiddled with a tricky bit of lighting mechanism above him. Charles was still handsome, even if his hair was a little gray. The years had only improved his looks- his slender face was less elfin while his eyes were still that clear impossible blue, his mouth vibrant and red.

More importantly, Charles was not the young man who criticized cultural aesthetics by depicting them- the hypocrisy of the art world continued to amaze Erik. Charles, when Erik had met him, had been earning his accolades, rather, selling his paintings by how he came across—an English Snow White from an old New York family— as much as by his art.

Yes, Charles F. Xavier, twenty years later, had improved, an improvement Erik noted with some satisfaction that Erik initiated. They had met on that proverbial dark and stormy night with a plot that proved more promising than a trite beginning. Erik had been illicitly lighting a cigarette- a habit he had picked up to stave off the need for meals, staring through the glass at one of the many small galleries in New York. Something about one of those paintings seemed to speak inside his mind, reminding him of home-

Then Charles Xavier had turned and stared at him through the glass, shocked and delighted all at once. He had come running out, dragging Erik in from the pouring rain.

“I can’t believe you’re real,” he had started babbling, “I was looking for you,” then offered a thousand dollars then and there for Erik to do a sitting of a portrait for him. Erik remembered a rather surreal conversation with Charles about what a “sitting” meant and taking his wet shirt off while Charles sat cross-legged on the floor and began sketching. Charles’ agent, Moira MacTaggert, had looked so incredulous at the development that she hadn’t even stopped Charles; she did, however, drew out few condoms from her purse before leaving with a rather amused gallery owner.

Of course, she liked the result. Apparently Charles had been agitating about going into the sciences and never picking up another paintbrush until Erik’s timely presence. Over the years, Moira and Erik had developed, if not a friendly relationship, at least an understanding that worked to their mutual benefit.

It probably should seem strange that Erik had a longer and more amiable understanding with a woman who thought he was rentboy when they first met than any of his ex-wives. Just as well he didn’t have kids. Magda had ignored him completely when he saw her last time at a conference.

“Is Moira back yet?” Erik asked. “I can’t believe she’s leaving you alone for so long.”

“She’s busy putting together the exhibit and probably looking for another young talent to nurture.” Erik snorted. Charles continued from behind his canvas. “Can’t exactly stop her now that I’m going over the pond after this show. She mentioned someone named Dane. Moira told me she intends to do everything perfect this time and not repeat the mistakes she made with me, though she did say that she was glad I never dyed my hair green.”

“You’re perfect,” Erik said. “I can’t imagine a better career.”

“Wouldn’t have been without you,” Charles said. “My world would’ve been entirely different if you hadn’t showed up. Actually, I think I would’ve thought much less of the world. You’re all about possibilities. So when am I getting my hovercar?”

“When the roads are magnetized and Summers gets a firmer grasp of physics. How do I look?” Erik asked. An hour had passed, he really wanted to stretch out his left leg.

Some artists wanted their sitters silent, but Erik had only sat for Charles. An early attempt by another artist to engage his services had ended badly- a bloody nose and threats of a lawsuit that never materialized when Erik had showed up at Charles’ place with bruised knuckles. Then Erik learned just how powerful an ally he had made in being Charles F. Xavier’s muse and more importantly, his friend. Sebastian Shaw never had another exhibit on the eastern seaboard.

 “Never more beautiful, darling,” Charles answered over his canvas. “Relax now, I’m just doing your shoulder. I know you’ve your Stark presentation planned sometime that week but you’ll come, right?”

“When have I ever missed one of your openings? Though I still think Days of Future Past is somewhat a ridiculous title. I know we came up with it, but more than three bottles of red wine also had their imput.”

“Moira said Logan liked the idea of an edgier sounding sort of retrospective. Just don’t without sleep for three days just so you can make your deadline and make it for mine.”

“I’ve minions now, Charles. They’ll be the ones going without sleep while I attend.”

“If you fall face-forward into punch again, I’ll claim I don’t know you.”

“A bit difficult, as you seemed to have designed the show around me.”

Charles had moved as he painted. Erik could now see his smile, the mouth soft and graceful. If Erik had more poetic inclinations, he would’ve written odes. It always seemed a pity to Erik that he couldn’t draw to save his life. Lehnsherr enterprise’s precision engineering blueprints mostly had designs originated from his hand, but Erik had never been able to find a mathematical function that would be able to describe the curve of Charles’ mouth or his brow. No photograph could capture Charles’ genius or talent.

Some things only lay in the realm of art.

After dinner, Erik and Charles fell asleep while talking. He startled awake when the front door opened but it was only Raven.

“Why are you here?” she asked, surveying the scene. She had on makeup that glowed in the dark.

“What does it look like?” Erik hissed, wishing he had worn a robe over pants and t-shirt. “What are you doing here?”

Raven retreated and took something from Charles’ desk. “My plus one invite,” she said, then disappeared out of the door again.

Erik squinted at the bright screen of his cell phone. The traffic should be mostly gone by now.

He shook Charles awake. “Charles, I’m leaving. You need to get to bed. Raven came and took an invite.”

“Yes.” Charles replied fuzzily, fitting his cheek into Erik’s palm. “You’ve beautiful hands.”

“I know, you told me,” Erik said, amused. “Goodnight.”


	2. Chapter 2

The publicity for Charles’ last show in New York began to intensify a few weeks later. Erik mostly ignored emails unrelated to his work, but the show was big enough that he saw advertisements on the streets.

Saturday morning, after a run and a shower, he was editing the latest draft one of his project teams had submitted when his suit was delivered. He signed for the delivery and carried the boxes to his bedroom.

 It had been a month since he was measured, but it still fit perfectly, of course. The suit was black with subtle red and purple threading- gaudy for any occasion except one that would be attended by people wearing peacock feathers and six inch heels as fashion statements. It suddenly occurred to Erik that almost every time he had seen Charles lately, Erik spent most of it either naked or clothed in something right off the runway. Charles had bought his first suit because Erik hadn’t owned any.  Erik didn’t recognize the designer and realize the cost until he saw the same suit featured on the inside pages of Vogue while standing behind a woman flipping through the magazine in the supermarket.

It somehow had become a habit over the years, even after Erik was earning enough he could buy his own suits, even if they weren’t Armani or a number of other European designer names that Erik had reluctantly memorized over the years. Charles always insisted and it was impossible to turn him down. As pleasant as it was to argue with Charles, there were arguments on better topics they could have.

Charles had been successful. There were a lot of exhibits; Erik always attended; there were a lot of suits, Magda had taken most them when she left, saying that she was owed half of all his assets. Erik supposed she sold them; almost all of them worn only once.

Most of the suits were inappropriate for work wear anyways—no one would take an engineer in a slim-cut suit and tapered legs with obvious satin trim seriously, but would’ve been nice to keep them, especially the first. Erik surveyed himself in the mirror; he had kept in shape, but he doubted he could fit into the suit he wore to attend Charles’ art exhibit for the first time, introduced as Charles’ friend.

And this would be his last suit from Charles, Erik supposed. After all, Charles’ career was going to expand into teaching duties in England. His was retiring from the New York art world. Not that he would no longer paint, but rather he wasn’t going to participate in the business of art for a while. And if there was no Charles; Erik wasn’t going to any more gallery openings. His interest in modern art had never expanded beyond his collaboration with Charles, the only artist and in fact, person, he had ever met whose idealism was so completely without cynicism or irony that Erik felt the world, in fact, could be a better place.

Two weeks of intense micromanaging of his teams and reviewing their new hires later, Erik dressed and drove himself down to Logan’s gallery where Charles and he had first met. Erik was arriving alone this time. He thought about bringing a date, but didn’t end up having the time. His personal life had gotten much simpler after his last marriage ended almost a decade ago. He was busy enough that he didn’t miss it. He found he appreciated the simplicity of being answerable only for himself. And in New York, company was never difficult to find. In fact, it seemed to have become easier as he got older and his appreciation for variety expanded.

Nonetheless, it would’ve been inappropriate to ask any of his employees- he preferred to imagine they were working in their off hours, anyways.

As far as he knew, Charles was attending alone as well. It would’ve been disenguous, he had said to Erik, when he was leaving after the summer. Erik saw Moira first, talking to a green-haired young woman. Dane, Erik remembered, her new protégé. Charles was nowhere to be seen at first.

He looked down at the program in his hand. The short bio of Charles, the list of prizes and this time, a mention of Erik’s name as well as long time friend and collaborator.

There were more familiar faces than usual, given the milieu. Strangely, Erik reflected, he met a larger number of his future investors through art opening rather than career fairs. Businessmen were often bored after their polite remarks about art had been exhausted, Erik was glad he didn’t come across model-pretty. A conversation with Lucius Fox’ director of operations had led to his first job.

Charles’s art were more classically rendered in the beginning – the lines as precise as any 19th century natural philosophy illustration, the hobby of which had lead Charles to chose sciences at Oxford before switching to the arts.

The Days of Future Past exhibit included paintings of Erik Charles had made in the first year of their friendship. Erik had seen and approved of every one. Heroine chic, indeed, he thought. He thought he had kept in shape, but according to the black and white paintings, some of them in photographic detail and life-sized, he wouldn’t have fit into any of the suits Charles had bought him. Perhaps Magda did him a favor taking them away; it spared his vanity, at least.

The exhibit had arranged the works in a sort of hopscotch chronological order, a freeform arrangement that for Erik at least, gave the impression of streams of time flowing backward and forward as Charles’ art had grown more abstract over the years.

Erik found himself standing in front of a series completed last year where he manifested mostly as colour blocks or, in one, as magnets and cogs and compasses.

He supposed it was better than being portrayed as going to fat.

 “You love him,” Raven said suddenly. She had an uncanny ability of appearing suddenly, which should’ve been impossible, given the golden hair and a figure that seemed the overzealous manifestation of a romantic imagination, wrapped in a mix of couture and what Charles referred vaguely as “punk” when she was growing up. Raven was almost ten years younger than Charles. Trustafarian nonsense, as far as Erik was concerned.

Erik hadn’t seen Charles yet, but he didn’t mind. It was early yet. There were people whom Charles were obligated to meet Erik didn’t mind avoiding.

“Of course,” he answered her.

Her gaze turned distinctively hostile. “You love him That’s why you slept with me.” It had been during one of her more androgynous periods. Her hair was red, which was most of what Erik remembered about it. He didn’t tell Charles, however. She was Charles’ sister, after all.

“I slept with you because I found you in my hotel bed, naked.” He paused, “You said yes.” He wasn’t apologetic about the number of his bed partners, but he had always been scrupulous about consent.

But Raven had been angry with him afterwards and she didn’t tell Erik why. She probably never told Charles that she slept with Erik. The one time Charles remarked on Raven’s distinct coolness toward Erik, Charles himself had just said maybe she was at that phase rebelling against everything Big-Brother related, including his friends.

“By that logic you should’ve slept with Charles dozens of times, If not hundreds. I found you in his apartment just the other night. Charles washes his brush in olive oil, doesn’t he? You probably just never made it from the studio to the bedroom.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Raven.”

“Admit it, Erik, you love him.”

“Of course I love him,” Erik said. “How could I not?” He snagged a glass from a passing server and indicated the people around him, and said, “Look at everyone here. They’ve come to toast him, the evolution of his art, but I was there in the beginning. This is Charles’ last show in New York, shouldn’t you put aside whatever childish resentment against me? It’s been years.“

Raven scoffed. “You were definitely there in the beginning. I think everyone knows it by now. And me, childish? You know, there are at least five people who would’ve been happier if neither your or Charles ever married them. I really feel fortunate that you only slept with me instead of going in with a proposal. You met and married who was it, Anna-Marie, within a month?”

Anna-Marie had been even younger than Raven, just out of college. Charles had laughed about Erik’s early midlife crisis. The marriage wasn’t a pleasant reminder. It ended within a year after several highly charged and bewildering arguments. Afterwards, Erik felt like an old man, swore off women, and buried himself in work, until he got back with Magda for the second time.

“I invited you to the wedding,” Erik said.

“You invited Charles, too,” she said and more meaningfully, “and then he married Amanda almost immediately after.”

And heralded one of the most awkward periods in Erik’s life he preferred not to remember. Amanda was a nurse anesthetist; bodies, and for that matter, bodily functions were familiar to her, but she watched every session Erik sat for Charles and commentated in a way that still made him vaguely ill. Erik had never watched Charles blush as much as he had during that period. They ended up setting up a schedule that would coincide with her work hours at the hospital. He would never admit it aloud, but he was glad when Charles divorced her. He had nightmares about being strapped down on a surgery table and unable to wake up.

“I don’t see where you’re going with rehashing our romantic histories.”

“Rather the point, Erik,” Raven said inexplicably.

Erik sought for a way to exit the conversation before Raven continued to pursue whatever agenda she had in mind. So what if his friendship with Charles had outlasted their marriages?

“Ars longa, vita brevis,” Erik muttered before spotting Azazel, who saw him and came over. He greeted Erik amiably enough, then wrapped an arm around Raven’s waist, whose expression softened. Thankfully, Erik felt his phone vibrating his pocket.

He headed off to find Charles, who was experiencing one of those lulls in conversations. He was alone with a frown on his face.

“Have you seen Raven? She introduced me to a man with a devil’s name as her boyfriend. The fellow has an air of mockery. I asked him what he thought, and did you know what he said to me? He said, ‘It’s rather exhibitionist, but I hope the romantic streak is in the family’.” Charles looked outraged. “Romantic! And the way he said it.”

“Azazel’s all right,” Erik said. “He works for me in legal I think. Lawyers aren’t known for their art education. Raven seemed to like him.”

Charles sighed. “She asked me whether it bothers me that you might not know I love you.”

“I know,” Erik said. “You love me for my body.”

“It is rather perfect,” Charles said, smiling at last. “I haven’t seen you all night. We’re all right though, aren’t we? You looked like you are going to bite someone’s head off.”

“I was enjoying people’s reaction to that picture.” Erik told him. “Where’s the blue-dress painting, though. I thought it rather demonstrated the particular style well.”

“Moira said it didn’t fit the overall theme.”

“Her loss,” Erik said. “I thought I looked fetching but you’re a success, no matter what people say. You deserve it.”

There were moments sometimes, standing with Charles, that Erik felt that they were speaking mind to mind. The entire world could fall away and they would be there still, remaking a better one because what they say to each other were always true, absent of falsehoods, platitudes and obfuscations.

“You deserve it,” Charles said. “Nothing would’ve been possible without you by my side.”

 “We’re a success, then,” Erik said.

Charles laughed, brilliant and beautiful, and Erik’s. “Yes.”


	3. Chapter 3

A few days later, Erik came in early to find one of their front-end programmers standing frozen beside the coffee machine upon seeing him. Erik was used to awkwardness and even guilt manifested this way, but this was Angel Salvatore; she had seen him around since she was an intern.

“That’s you in Charles Xavier’s Days of Future Past exhibit,” she said quietly, staring at him with a look that bordered between fascination and horror.

“I hope that’s not to distract me from the fact that you’ve a deadline today,” Erik said.

“But that’s really you,” Angel continued to gawp. She was rather short; Erik wasn’t exactly sure whether if it was where her gaze naturally fell or if she was actually focused around his beltline.

“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?” Erik asked. “Charles is an old friend.”

“The program said that you are his muse,” Angel continued. Persistence was in the company culture, Erik thought wryly. “But wasn’t he married?”

The implication- he wasn’t married to you. It reminded too strongly of Erik of his last unpleasant conversation with Raven. “We’ve had a good partnership,” he replied. “Charles is named one of the most influential artists of the 21st century, but his personal life is really none of your business. Now, are you actually going to go work or do you need new assignments?”

Angel fled. According to Mortimer, his personal assistant, there was discussion about some sort of group outing to see Charles’ exhibit.

Erik thought it a little strange. He knew a few art history majors who turned to industrial engineering and the like, but Charles works and their price range usually exceeded those who worked day job outside the financial sector and under the VP level. Erik paid a competitive salary, but not enough to make his employees millionaires. Perhaps Angel was better at networking than he had given her credit for.  

Before the end of July, he began to field the occasional queries even from HR. He actually saw a promotional flyer on the general noticeboard about the exhibit. On one hand, Erik was glad that Charles work was reaching different audiences; on the other, Erik wasn’t exactly sure that the attention was all directed toward Charles.

“We think it’s very large of you,” Armando Munoz said at the end of the quarter social; he had been slightly drunk, Erik thought, amused. Armando was serious at work, possibly even more serious than Erik. Munoz just got his doctorate and was apparently still operating on grad school schedule. He didn’t seem to ever sleep and seemed to survive on coffee and green smoothies “That you spend your time contributing to the general aesthetics of New York. I think any of us would be glad of you taking us all the way.”

He didn’t say all the way to what. By the bewildered look of his audience, half of them didn’t either. The other half seemed to look at anywhere but at Erik afterwards. Emma Frost, a consultant they had recently hired to deal with Stark lawyers and Pepper Potts, had been in attendance. She, for some reason actually toasted Erik.

Erik had frowned and resumed talking to Azazel.

“I can’t believe you actually said that,” he heard Alex whisper to Armando when he walked past them. Erik wouldn’t put past it that there was some sort of obscure bet involved, but over the years, Erik had grown immured to his more youthful employees and their escapades as long as they still did their work. Erik liked to think he was a severe but fair boss.

Anyways, he had promised to go to Charles and help him tidy up for his move. Erik’s own apartment wasn’t exactly a model in tidiness, but he definitely had less stuff than Charles’. Any trace of his tendency toward accumulation of possessions disappeared when Magda left the second time.

The professional movers had already packed up the larger stuff. Charles wasn’t going to sell the studio, but the place looked ghostly with the furniture covered in dustsheets.

“Apparently my family already has a townhouse in London,” Charles said as they packed away his sketchbooks and notes and whatever keepsakes that Erik felt worth keeping. “Already furnished.” He sighed. “It even has a Rembrandt.”

“What hardship, Charles, to go from a New York penthouse to a London townhouse.”

“Nothing compared to my mansion, of course.”

“The fact that you own a ridiculous castle is something I try not to remember.”

Erik visited exactly once. He wondered if the portrait of him in imaginary Regency costume, drawn quickly mostly to irritate the butler who went on about the nobility Xavier heritage with the implication that Charles was not living up to his name, was still hanging in the ancestral gallery, mixed with all of Xavier family and ancestors.

“Do you think she would want these?”

“What?” Charles pointed at the wall and the row of small black and white photographs. They had been part of a design with a number of others; it had been a while since Erik actually looked at the images themselves.

He tried to remember the occasion. Lilandra Niramani’s birthday party. Charles had went to one of her lectures at NYU, then her show, and then spent the next two weeks besotted, talking about her art, her intelligence, her beauty. The admiration had been mutual.

Erik had been busy building up his company that year, emerging briefly to be Charles’ best man. That was Charles’s third and last marriage.

By the time the photo had been taken, the marriage was falling apart. Hence the lavish party that Charles for his wife. She was only in one of the photos and only half of her face; Charles wasn’t wearing a tie, exposing a silver sliver of throat.

Later on, Charles had apologetically told Erik that she had cut up his tie for one her pieces.

Erik had promised to get him another for Christmas. Lilandra was living apart from Charles by then. She had defied her parents marrying Charles and wouldn’t sign the final divorce papers until two years later. It was Charles’ most amiable divorce. They still see each other occasionally, Erik understood. Charles was as enthusiastic about her art as ever: one of those friendships that should never have been a marriage.

“She married again,” Erik reminded him.

“Right,” Charles said, putting the photos in the ‘maybe’ pile, which meant they would go into storage, probably until Charles was old enough to forget them. “Erik? How are we going to do this when I’m in London?”

There was no question what ‘this’ was. There was a pang in Erik’s chest that he had tried to ignore ever since he knew that Charles would be leaving. Erik understood, on some level, that he had a possessive streak probably influenced by a childhood that kept him fed and schooled, but didn’t offer luxuries. And, even now Erik could buy new cars and new clothes and go on holiday, he was old enough to know he couldn’t keep people even if he wished to. Poets and artists kept their loved ones immortal. Charles belonged to the ages already, but his friendship belonged to Erik and Erik wanted, more than anything now, to keep it.

Erik considered a moment. “Skype,” he suggested.

Charles looked dubious, but Erik had rallied. “I’ll set up a camera. You can get a projector or something, so I’ll still be as large as life, or smaller. It’s something actually worth exploring.” They had been talking about microcosms and macrocosms.

“You know that two dimensional renderings of three dimensional objects are inherently distorted,” Charles pointed out. He seemed suddenly very young sitting there on the floor, looking a little lost.

“Holograms is still a technology in progress,” Erik replied. “You’ll be one of the first to get a prototype, but I don’t know how else we’re going to do this. I can visit, of course. We do live in the age of airplanes.”

A hard blank look came over Charles’ face, so Erik diverted the conversation. Then they went to a farewell party with a few close friends and Erik went home, feeling sentimental and old. Twenty years, he thought, and Charles looked as young as when he had met him while Erik had grown wrinkled especially around the eyes.

Nonetheless, he found himself googling webcams at his lunch hour the next day. He called Charles and told him that he found a webcam had enough megapixels that Charles could probably zoom in and see every pore if he wished. Charles had laughed, but he seemed in a better mood.

“Any way you want me,” Erik said. “I’ll set it up in the bedroom. It has the best lighting.” He saw Azazel through the glass. It was almost one o’clock.  “Got to go.”

The door had been open. Azazel came in and said, “What is that conversation I just heard?”

“I’m setting conference calls,” Erik said, annoyed, then he remembered that Azazel may be Raven’s new fiancé, “with Charles.”

“Conference calls?” Azazel shook his head. “Is that what they’re calling it these days? And they say lawyers are heartless.”

Erik brought up his calendar on the computer to remind himself of the contents of the meeting.

 “I met with Stark’s lawyers,” Azazel said. “They were very insistent on reserving the rights to altering the design.”

“No. If it’s going to have our name on it, it has to be ours exclusively. I don’t want lawsuits because Tony Stark’s basement tinkering result in a pileup in California.”

“It’s a three hundred page contract,” Azazel continued. “Janos found a paragraph that threatened to invalidate the whole thing, but Emma reviewed the wording in our patents and said that we’ll have leverage for further negotiations. The best thing to do would be to do our presentation to Tony Stark personally and make it clear that we’ll be best ones capable of meeting their expectations. She said she could arrange it if you want to pursue it. The matter is,”  he paused, “Stark may make you an offer to buy everything. There were rumors that Potts had been conducting valuations on us.”

“I’m not selling,” Erik told him, then after Azazel left, he found he couldn’t concentrate properly. The world was changing. Stark Industries was now interested in green technology and Erik the means the direct its efforts. He had always wanted to change the world. At twenty, he had envied people like himself. He imagined that they were happy. He supposed he was, in a way. He wondered if he would be happier if he did sell the company, taken an early retirement. Then what? He could go to London, but England had miserable weather.

England would have Charles.

At four o’clock in the morning, Erik drove Charles to the airport. New York summers were humid; it drizzling a little.

“It was raining when we met,” Charles said.

“I remember,” Erik said, smiled. They parted at the gates, cheerfully. It was just themslves. What was the point of making anyone else stay up? They lived in the 21st century. There was Skype and airplanes and neither of them were without means. Erik could fly to London every weekend if he wanted to. It only took a couple of hours on a Concorde. It took less time to cross the Atlantic than the American continent.

The problem was-

Erik couldn’t sleep that night. After answering Munoz’ emails, he watched the city through the window. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he and Charles were together all the time. They had their separate lives. What could they talk about if they were together all the time, living the same life? The success of their respective careers depended on their separate lives that converged when they got together, like rivers that flowed into the same sea.

He knew couples who married after long distance relationships, people who got together at the end because they both wanted to.

But Erik and Charles had been together. Together, they had distilled and dreamed and preserved what they thought worthwhile in world, manifested in the art that Charles showed and in the world that Erik would build. And now Charles was gone, entering a different period in his artistic development. The retrospective had been that, he was leaving them behind. Yes, Erik had picked up the jargon.

The telephone rang at seven o’clock.

“Are you all right?” To his surprise, it was Raven.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I didn’t think he would really do it.”

“What?”

“Leave. I thought it’s just a thing he says. I just thought- Anyways, I’m sorry, Erik, for what I said to you. It wasn’t nice. I think I was just wasn’t sure. You know, about Azazel, after you guys’ example.”

It was a rather bewildering conversation. Erik wondered if it was because he hadn’t slept all night.

“But he asked me to marry him and I said yes. And I told Charles. You’re invited to the wedding at the ridiculous castle next summer.”

“Congratulations,” Erik said.


	4. Chapter 4

It felt a bit silly to lounge naked in his bed on a Sunday, alone, in front of a webcam. Erik couldn’t get the idea out of his head that he was about to star in porn. Apparently his awkwardness was showing.

“It’s not working,” Charles said, despondent.

“Sorry about falling asleep on you the other night,” Erik said, sitting up.

“It’s fine,” Charles said quickly and looked away, as if ashamed.  

Erik put on a shirt and had a conversation with Charles. Then Charles yawned and it was his turn to fall asleep. He had switched to his laptop while talking to Erik and taken it to bed. For a while, Erik watched him, strangely fascinated at first. Charles had ambiguous feelings toward the pre-Raphaelites, but he always looked as if he had walked out of the romantic imagination of the brotherhood, never more so than framed by the matte black of the computer monitor. It was not the first time Erik had seen Charles asleep, though perhaps never from this angle, nor this close. His hair had grown long again, a natural artful tousle that would be soft to the touch. Erik reached out, but there was only the cool plastic of the screen.

Six hours time difference. Strange how simple arithmetic made things so difficult. Being prepared for the difficulty didn’t mean the actual experience wasn’t frustrating.

Erik sighed when the laptop went to screensaver and prepared for a function Stark Industries was holding. The invitation was not unusual given the number of meetings he had with them lately.

Emma and Azazel were right about them wanting to buy in an attempt to shortcut negotiations. Erik still had no intention to sell, but took the opportunity to gauge the extent of their interest. He probably shouldn’t have went home with a Stark employee after the party, but he had free time, she was beautiful, interested, and actually said she wanted to see his etchings. Rather, Charles’ etchings. Erik hadn’t even meant to use the line until she responded. Charles swore by it; Erik had thought it only worked because the way Charles said it.

They had made it to the bedroom before she stopped; her eyes widened. Erik followed the direction of her gaze.

“What is that?” Of course she knew what it was. “Do you make sex tapes?”

“No,” Erik answered. He was going to unplug it to reassure her.

“Do you want to make one?” she asked. She was almost as tall as him. Her hand closed over his wrist. She smiled. Under the dimmed light, her blue eyes danced.

“No.”

“It could be fun.”

Erik kissed her instead, which got him an enthusiastic response and hands down his trousers instead.

Erik fell asleep and was woken up for a second round. The next time he woke up, he saw her pulling a skirt from her handbag then over narrow hips. No need for breakfast then, he thought, staring at the ceiling. “Do you want breakfast?” he asked.

“It’s been fun, but it’s not even six yet,” she told him, and left.

After a while, Erik got up, showered, then changed the sheets. He sat down in front of his computer. It would be noon in Britain, lunch time on a Saturday. Charles was offline.

So Erik worked then got the groceries, did laundry. He took down a book and read. Time passed quickly on the Internet. He thought about getting a cat before reason returned. He spent Sunday in much of the same way. It was a productive weekend.

On Monday night, he came back to a few missed calls from Charles. One of which was: “Chess?”

It was something, at least. Neither of them was very good, but it meant they had long games.  

Erik bought a set, laid it out according to their online game, and showed it in Charles.

Charles, in London, did the same.

They talked, they played chess. Erik kept his clothes on and thought about visiting on a weekend, but it remained a thought. He never ended up mentioning it. Charles didn’t either.

Erik bought books about chess and read them. Charles must’ve done the same, because Erik still lost as often as he won. It became frustrating. He had always thought chess a quiet game, reserved for old men and the odd child prodigies; he didn’t expect the excitement of seeing an opening or the frustration of a broken defense.

Chess was as warlike as any corporate engagement he was engaging at work. More, perhaps, because Charles now existed only as images and sound, little packets of information sent across undersea cables and reconstructed by coding….

Beyond that, he was memory.

One night, Erik dreamed of Charles. Just flashes of pale freckled skin, red lips, and eyes looking at him intently while Erik pressed him down onto the mattress. The last was not a memory, but it was a male body beneath him. It was Charles’ body. Erik knew it from the shirtsleeves during the summer, from a friendly arm slung across his shoulder…

He took a cold shower, but now every memory of Charles- his cologne, the touch of his hand, the red of his lips became heady, arousing in a way that he never expected. Charles had always been beautiful, always within reach. Erik had been naked in front of him a hundred times, a thousand times.  

It seemed perverse of his body to respond, now.

You couldn’t fight something you couldn’t touch. If Charles detected the tension in Erik, he didn’t say anything. He had experience with Erik’s moods. They passed.

And Erik had hoped desperately that this one would pass as well. He knew he was becoming curt, that he was cutting their conversations short, but he couldn’t help it. It was as if that one dream had wakened and focused and sharpened his yearning and nostalgia and presented him with an impossible and irrational solution. But even as a teenager; Erik was never immature enough to believe sex could solve anything. 

And for once, he could not confide in Charles. They could laugh about it, dismiss it all philosophically, but Erik was realizing he didn’t want it dismissed. He had always loved Charles’ mind, now wanted the Charles of his new dreams, the body under him and waking up next to him- friend and lover and the other end of Erik’s soul. 

Perhaps it was time he settled down again. It was just loneliness. He had dinners with Ororo Munroe, whom he had known only vaguely before; she was clever, beautiful, and very unattached. She seemed to like him.

For a while it worked, until he found avoiding Charles only made his imaginations grew more lurid. And angry at himself, he was ashamed, becoming cold every time he heard Charles' voice, see his face. It was worse when Charles responded to Erik’s coldness with his own. It happened sometimes between them, but inevitably of habit always drew them together again.

Erik heard from an acquaintance that Charles had a new show, a small one. “Surprised you weren’t there,” the man had said. “Rather unique pieces, unlike what I’ve seen before. Rumor from the academy is that he got a new inspiration. It’s rather exciting.”

Erik had said something about being busy and quickly and furtively googled standing in the aisle of the supermarket. He found the mention. A new muse, evidently, according to one of the esoteric editorials. Perhaps another waiflike 20-something, Erik thought, thinking of the young men and women now around Charles. His students, hanging on to his every word, every gesture, ready to be charmed. 

That evening, Charles was in at least seven layers of clothing, all of which Erik had wished to peel off, except Charles had looked very cold.  Apparently the heating wasn’t working.

“When are you coming for Christmas?” he had asked, and hadn’t mentioned anything about painting, about his exhibit.

Erik had promised to check his schedule.

Erik had a long weekend off at Thanksgiving, but he didn’t tell Charles. They made vague plans about end of December. Finally, Erik mentioned the exhibit, but Charles grew quiet and said something about chess.

It was October. London rained frequently. Charles found someone else.

Chess, it was all that remained of them.

And Erik found himself thinking that maybe dates weren’t enough.

 “Do you want to get married?” he asked. Ororo and he had shared interests. They were compatible, probably more compatible than he and Anna-Marie. They were both mature individuals. He brought up the subject in conversation at a nice restaurant. There was no point in playing coy. Ororo had always been straightforward. He appreciated that about her.

Ororo raised an eyebrow. “I’m flattered, but that came out of nowhere.”

Erik could admit that his pride was a little stung. He thought he had been doing a rather creditable job. “Is that a no?”

“It’s a no,” answered Ororo. “Erik, I did go see Xavier’s Days of Future Past. I don’t want a marriage to be another place I’ve to compete. I’ve enough of that at work.”

“Who are you competing with?” Erik asked. “I don’t cheat on my lovers.”

Ororo laughed. “I like you, Erik. You’re handsome, successful, and rather wonderful in bed. Anyone would be glad to marry you if they can live with the fact no one will be ever as important to you as Charles Xavier.”

“Charles is based in London now,” Erik said. “We were never lovers.”

“You realize your first instinct is not another argument persuading me to marry you.” She seemed very calm. “Now let’s just have our meal. We can still be friends.” She smiled.

“Friend,” Erik sighed. “Yes, I can do that.”

He woke up at four in the morning alone in his bed and saw that Charles had checkmated him.


	5. Chapter 5

Azazel seemed entirely oblivious to Erik’s altered relation with Charles and, now being the fiancé of Raven Xavier, treated Erik as some sort confidante. If Erik didn’t know better, he would think Azazel was courting him, considering the constant invitation to lunch whenever they met.

And they met frequently as the complications with the Stark contract increased exponentially. Finally, Emma Frost justified her cost when she said that Potts personally penciled in an appointment of Erik with Tony Stark. Everyone tired of spending money on lawyers and meetings that went nowhere.

A few days later, Azazel turned up with a handwritten invitation from Raven herself. He appeared quite convinced that it was the winning argument. Erik sighed. Azazel looked happy. Erik imagined Raven being the same. He had known her for almost as long as Charles.

“You shouldn’t ignore Charles, especially since he’s so far away,” Azazel said as they drove over to the photography exhibit after work. Raven mentioned the photographer was a close friend. “Raven thinks you two shouldn’t fight in general, not about what’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.”

“I’m not fighting with Charles,” said Erik. “We spoke just yesterday. I even know what he had for dinner last night.”

Charles had stayed online long enough to frown at the position of Erik’s knight before remembering there had been a reservation at a new Indian place. When Erik laughed at Charles’ excitement over food in England, Charles actually spent a minute rhapsodizing about the curry before rushing off. 

“Raven also thinks you two should get married and have babies.”

“Raven has a shakier grasp of anatomy than I thought. I told Charles it’s a bad idea for education systems to specialize too young.”

Azazel grinned. “Raven has a perfect grasp of anatomy. You’re just not putting enough faith in modern technology.”

“Technology, by definition, does not require faith. It works, or it doesn’t.”

A point of view lost on Azazel, who fell silent as they hunted for parking.

When Erik entered the open space of the gallery foyer, Steve Roger’s distinctive back was in view. Erik had met him occasionally over the years. Steve was an artist turned career military turned documentarian who looked as if he walked out of an advertisement for the marines and talked as if he was going to single- handedly reorganize the government.

Erik and he got along. He supposed the photographer, Buchanan, must’ve been one of Steve’s army friends. He didn’t pay much to the photographs themselves; washed in red-tint, the focus on the machinery of war irritated him- technology used for all the wrong reasons.

Azazel had disappeared. Raven was nowhere in sight, yet. A small crowd was around Rogers. Erik walked over. The profile and the red hair caught his attention first.

“Then I told her I’m not hanging an erotic painting of Erik Lehnsherr in our bedroom if I’m planning to meet him and talk about magnetism.” Tony Stark was shorter and spoke more quickly than Erik expected.

“It’s a Xavier painting,” Potts said. She turned to Steve with an air of long suffering. “I told him it’s art.”

Erik was amused if a little unsettled. He was well aware that pictures of him in various states of undress existed. He had never asked where the buyers put them. Anyways, if someone wanted to masturbate to a $40,000 piece of artwork, there were likely other problems in his life.

 “How did you know it’s Erik Lehnsherr?” Steve asked. “The few of Xavier’s latest output have no faces.”

 “That doesn’t sound very erotic,” said Emma Frost, dripping with diamonds. Erik almost didn’t recognize her.

“I should be clearer,’ Steve said. “The faces are all masked in some way, or near enough. Helmets, hats, shadows, the like. Only the body’s visible. Charles gone back to an earlier phase of his work and the pieces are-“  He spotted Erik and strangely, looked embarrassed.

Emma laughed. “So, Tony, unless you and Erik here have something to confess, I’m most intrigued by how you recognized a faceless daub as Erik.”

Stark greeted Erik, mentioned future cooperation and gave Erik a quick glance up and down before Emma egged him on. Stark waggled his eyebrows at her and typed something on his phone.

“Maybe not opt for the projection,” suggested Potts, glancing down. “No-“ she said, when Azazel inserted himself into the circle, but the video played.

Erik watched it for a while. He assumed from the tinny speakers the footage involved musical accompaniment.

“It went viral on the internal Stark servers for a while. I deleted it, of course.”

The city never slept. The filtered in through the sheer curtains. Moonlight and a small bedside lamp had been all the lighting it required. The camera delivered on the advertisement.

“Of course.”

Six degrees of separation, Erik thought. From Stark to Frost to Azazel to Raven to Charles- that was only five. Erik didn’t underestimate the internet. “The grand scheme of things”- was that what Azazel referred to?

 “You really nothing to be ashamed of,” Stark continued. “Well-edited, better than most professional work.  In fact, didn’t know it’s you except I could see the original filename.”

And Charles must have seen it. Seen it and knew it was him. It was not an anonymous body for him.

“Do you want to press charges?” Azazel spoke next to him.

For some reason, it sounded like the funniest thing Erik had ever heard. He pulled his lips back from his teeth. “Nothing what everyone else has already seen,” he said and let Steve change the subject.

There were some illusions in friendships. Charles had sex. Erik had sex. They didn’t have sex with each other. In some ways, it was the only thing they didn’t know about each other. It was the one thing that Erik dreamed now, when he was particularly maudlin, of showing Charles.

And Charles took his face away. Erik had frightened him. He didn’t see the painting Potts bought for Stark. A private sale, likely enough. Erik did a search through his unread emails and came up with the latest mention about Charles Xavier: a university magazine talked about a new exciting intensity to his work. Erik wondered it was the same new muse from a couple of month ago.

Charles made friends easily. Perhaps it wasn’t just the food, but the company.

“I’m sorry,”

The sour twist of jealousy in his stomach didn’t abate even when he saw Charles at Stark Tower a few weeks later, trying to camouflage his gray tweed into the steel-gray pillar in the far corner of the room. Charles looked equally surprised to see Erik when he came over.

“Raven dragged me over the last minute, saying something about cupcakes requiring my approval this morning. Mentioning carbon footprint didn’t stop her. We just got off a Concord about an hour ago, but somehow I ended up here.” He ran his hand through his hair, his vast blue eyes more mesmerizing than Erik remembered. “I look a mess, that’s why I’m hiding.” 

The cardigan’s rumpled beneath the jacket; the shirt collar’s not quite straight; Charles licked his mouth.

“Let’s have sex,” Erik said, taking a step closer.

Charles took a glass of wine from a serving plate floating past him and raised an eyebrow. “What? Here?” It wasn’t a no.

“Come over,” Erik said. “I’ll show you your etchings.”

Charles laughed, a bright sound ringing in Erik’s head.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Erik added. “I won’t say a word.”

Charles goggled. “You’re serious.”

“I didn’t think there was any doubt that I love you,” Erik said.

“I didn’t either,” said Charles. He frowned at his glass. “Am I hallucinating this conversation?” His hand leaned on a door handle; it turned. The lights came on inside some sort of sitting room, only half-finished- the wiring and the vents still exposed, but the door looked sturdy. Erik ushered them both inside.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. I miss seeing you. You say you missed seeing me. It would be fun. We can play chess afterwards.” Erik considered and said, “I’ve better wine than what they’re serving.”

“Fun,” Charles said dubiously. He took a step away from Erik. “You marry women.” He lowered his voice, “You slept with my sister.”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew. She told me.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You were adults. What could I say? Don’t do it again? Marry her?”

“This is entirely irrelevant. Raven’s marrying someone else. If you have someone else, that’s fine, but at least tell me. You know I don’t mind that you sleep with men, so if you found some other inspiration.  We’re friends. I don’t- It’s“ He couldn’t say the words. It would be a lie. He would care.

Charles flinched. “I don’t sleep with men,” he said quietly.

“Well then-“ Erik felt foolish. He turned around so he wouldn’t have to face the pity in Charles’ face. “Forget it then. I got it all wrong. Let’s get out of here. Raven’s going to think we eloped.”

“I know you don’t, so I haven’t.”

Erik turned around slowly. “Haven’t?”

Charles looked as if he had aged twenty years in two minutes. Erik wanted nothing more than to erase them. “At first, I didn’t want to take advantage of you. You were magnificent. You still are. I needed you beside me. I think I fell in love with women because I couldn’t compare them to you. I missed more than just seeing you. There are moments still in my days in London where I thought- I must tell Erik this. Erik will be amused. I wonder what Erik will think.”

“Then you found someone else,” Erik said, bitter. “You have a new muse. You rendered me naked again; I was just a body.”

“There had been no one else. There never was. If you’re talking about that blasted painting- it’s that blasted video that Raven sent me. It’s like you’re taunting me- look at what you’re missing, look what you have missed. I couldn’t tell you that I watched your _sextape_ ;. I couldn’t even bear to look at you in the face. I almost threw it away except it was you….”

Erik closed his eyes. He opened them; Charles still stood before him. “So why won’t you come home with me?”

“For fun,” Charles repeated with a quiver in his voice. His whole body trembled.

“No,” Erik said. “Not for fun. For serious. I imagined,” he began haltingly, “I dreamed.” Faltered. “You’ve been always so beautiful,” he finished helplessly. “You were the one constant good thing in my life. could I risk to destroy what we have together? But I didn’t know how much I missed you near me until you were gone and stopped _looking_ at me and everything we have seemed to just disappear.”

“Raven will be happy.” It seemed like such a non-sequitur. “We’re less noble and more foolish than we thought,” Charles continued. “Everyone else seemed to have known. But Erik, you’ve always been more to me than what you look like.” He reached out, his fingertip, lightly callused, traced down the side of Erik’s face. “I love you entirely. Marry me.”

“Come home with me,” Erik said. His hand closed over rough wool and pulled Charles close to him

“Yes,” Charles said, tilted up his head and closed the last inch between their lips. The tip of Charles’ tongue brushed across his mouth when they parted.

By the time the car arrived to take them away, Erik’s neck stung pleasantly from the graze of Charles’ stubble.

They ended up in Charles’ old studio. Either one of them could’ve given the address.

“Take my clothes off,” Erik breathed against Charles’ mouth, thankful that the heat had been left on. Their coats and scarfs lay abandoned on the floor.

“This would be new.” Charles’s fingers wrapped Erik from his tie, his shirt, unthreaded his belt. Erik groaned as Charles hand pressed down the front of his trousers before taking off his pants.

“Should I draw you,” Charles asked, his voice thick as he stepped away, his gaze hotter than Erik had ever seen it. “Just like this? How long could you remain still?”

And he actually went to pull off the dustsheets from his easel, all the while undressing in front of Erik, as if unaffected.

Erik followed the trail of clothes and turned Charles around, knocking over the canvas roll to spin and unfurl around them. The serenity was an illusion. Erik held Charles in his arms then bore him very gently, to the ground, pressed against him skin to skin.

In the middle of the night, they removed themselves to Charles’ bed, the sheets smoother than linen canvas, the mattress more forgiving than the ground.


End file.
